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Topic: NJ Boardwalk Pizza (Read 210016 times)

In the video you mentioned earlier, at , it looks like the dough balls are stored on what appear to be sheet trays, with six dough balls per tray. There are some pizza operators who say that they can store more dough balls in a given space when using trays and racks instead of plastic dough boxes. I have seen some double racks that have 52 slots. The trays can be individually inserted into bags (often jokingly referred to as "body bags") or a large bag can be put over the entire rack. Using trays and racks also avoids having to down stack and cross stack.

Of course, you may still be right on the duration of the cold fermentation period. Long cold ferments of several days are not the norm for professionals from what I have read.

In the video you mentioned earlier, at , it looks like the dough balls are stored on what appear to be sheet trays, with six dough balls per tray. There are some pizza operators who say that they can store more dough balls in a given space when using trays and racks instead of plastic dough boxes. I have seen some double racks that have 52 slots. The trays can be individually inserted into bags (often jokingly referred to as "body bags") or a large bag can be put over the entire rack. Using trays and racks also avoids having to down stack and cross stack.

Of course, you may still be right on the duration of the cold fermentation period. Long cold ferments of several days are not the norm for professionals from what I have read.

Peter

Peter,

Thank you for going over that video and spotting that they might be using dough trays. I never would have picked that up. I could imagine them using something like this, because they make so many pizzas in one day. I am only familiar with the locations of Mack's in Wildwood. The one is fairly big, with a staircase leading to an upstairs place where people can also eat their pizzas. The one other place isn't that big, so I can't imagine if they are making the dough in the basements, where they would store all their dough. I think their are three locations in Wildwood if I am correct. Maybe someone else could fill us in on how much space either the Mack's or Mack & Marco's have. I might just have to go down their this summer, if I can't get this figured out. It is about a four hour drive from where I live one way. At least I could get to visit the shore again and get to taste the Mack's pizza.I was also wondering about the longer cold ferment. That is why I am going to bring a dough ball home and watch how it cold ferments. I also thought about how unusual it would be for a pizza business like them to do a long ferment. I could imagine they might be making a dough that might last for two to three days.

Mack and Manco in Ocean City..you can just see the how big the place their places might be.

Here are more links to Wildwood, but not particularly Mack’s, although some do have pictures of Mack's pizza. Wildwood has a lot to do with Doo Wop. You can get a feel about what Wildwood is like, from these links.

Wildwood is famous for their tram cars, that transport people from one end of the boardwalk to the other, if you get to tired to walk or want to sightsee. If you ever visit Wildwood, you will never forget the tram cars. It is always, “Watch the Tram car, please”. You always need to get out of their way. The constant “Watch the Tram car, please can get on your nerves.

I received the products from Stanislaus Food Products, today. If I decide to try out the test Mack's dough over the weekend, does anyone have any suggestions on which one of these products I should try, until I get a can of Gangi Supreme Super Heavy Pizza Sauce with basil?

Thanks for letting me know what kind would be similar. If you don't mind me asking, how long did it take you to get to Mack's from where you live? I think my daughter is going to go along with me to Mack's in May. I hope it works out, so I can try their pizza, again.

I received the products from Stanislaus Food Products, today. If I decide to try out the test Mack's dough over the weekend, does anyone have any suggestions on which one of these products I should try, until I get a can of Gangi Supreme Super Heavy Pizza Sauce with basil?

Thanks,

Norma

Norma, these are basically the same exact product, but the saporito has had almost all of its water removed. I think you will prefer the full red, as there is more of the natural tomato juice left in the product. With the saporito you will have to add quite a bit of tap water to get it to the right consistency. Its actually even thicker than what you buy as "tomato paste" at the normal grocery store. You have probably noticed already how heavy the can is.

I have found that almost every lesser known brand of california produced commercial tomato products actually mimic the stanislaus line of products. If you do ever get your hands on the gangi supreme super heavy pizza sauce I have a feeling you are going to find that it is almost the exact same thing as the saporito super heavy pizza sauce you have now.

P.S, you are way too kind to me in your above posts! I think .2-.3% idy cold fermented for 2-5 days is going to get you close to the right fermentation point for your macs clone. You may very well be correct and it is a 1 or 2 day dough, but if you go for that you might want to up the yeast to .3-.35. Good luck Norma!

Norma, these are basically the same exact product, but the saporito has had almost all of its water removed. I think you will prefer the full red, as there is more of the natural tomato juice left in the product. With the saporito you will have to add quite a bit of tap water to get it to the right consistency. Its actually even thicker than what you buy as "tomato paste" at the normal grocery store. You have probably noticed already how heavy the can is.

I have found that almost every lesser known brand of california produced commercial tomato products actually mimic the stanislaus line of products. If you do ever get your hands on the gangi supreme super heavy pizza sauce I have a feeling you are going to find that it is almost the exact same thing as the saporito super heavy pizza sauce you have now.

P.S, you are way too kind to me in your above posts! I think .2-.3% idy cold fermented for 2-5 days is going to get you close to the right fermentation point for your macs clone. You may very well be correct and it is a 1 or 2 day dough, but if you go for that you might want to up the yeast to .3-.35. Good luck Norma!

scott r,

Thank you for your suggestions. I now use Saporito Super Heavy Pizza Sauce with 7/11 ground tomatoes at the market stand, so I know how thick the Saporito Super Heavy Pizza Sauce is. I even need to add water to this mixture before I use it. I know how heavy the cans are, when I load a case at a time into my van.

I am anxious to see how all this works out. I will watch the dough over the weekend and decide if I want to use it Saturday or Sunday. Of course it isn't going to bake the same at home in my oven, but at least I can get a feel about the taste of the cheese and sauce. Hopefully some of the dough will last until Tuesday, so I also can try that out. I might have to adjust different things in the formula.

Thanks again for wishing us on this thread the Best of Luck,

Norma

After looking at this article and reading about half way though about Mack and Manco being from the same area of Trenton and learning from others how to make the Tomato Pie, it now make me wonder if they are making the about the same kind of pie at the shore. http://njmonthly.com/articles/restaurants/the-original.htmlQuote from article above, nearly at the end. “Anthony Mack and Vincent Manco grew up in Trenton, where they absorbed tomato pie culture before starting their three Mack and Manco pizzerias in Ocean City.”

By looking at that pie, I can’t tell how it tastes, but looks like a Mack’s or Mack and Manco pizza.

This then made me curious to learn more about the Tomato Pie. I then searched on the forum for De Lorenzo’s pizza. On the spit topic Re: Philly/Trenton-area tomato pie on Reply #19 http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,7841.msg44328.html#msg44328 BenLee says all the dough is opened by hand, is crispy, and is a dry dough, probably low hydration. He goes on to say they dress their pies the about the same as Mack’s and Mack and Manco. The dough also sounds like it is pressed out before opening.

Also while reading this thread it says the Delorenzo’s Pizza is cooked at high temperatures and later in the thread it says the pies are baked at around 550 degrees F.

This is an older article from The New York Times, but tells the tomato sauce is spiced with oregano and a little garlic. It also says in this article that the oven is a rotating brick oven, so that would make me guess, that the Roto-Flex has a stone.

There are 21 good pictures of Mack and Mancos inside and outside if you search under Goggle images on the first page and then click on the one for the bridgeandtunnelclub.com. There are two under bridgeandtunnelclub.com I can’t get that link to work.

I will keep searching for information on either Mack’s or Mack and Mancos, to give us a feel what kind of pizzas Mack and Mack and Manco make.

norma, I busted out the all trumps yesterday (thursday) in hopes that I could help you get closer to your mark with this one. After mixing up two batches of dough I have settled on 59% hydration as having what seems to be the right feel after looking at all these videos and pictures. My first dough was a 61%, and it seemed a little wet for the look I have seen, so I did a second batch at 59%. I used .2% IDY and I let the dough sit out for about an hour and a half after I stopped the mixer to try to simulate what I find often happens in busy pizzerias. The phone will ring, or a delivery truck will show up, so its often hard for a fast moving pizzeria to get the dough right into the walk in. This also helps account for the time it takes to scale and tray the doughballs when you are making a huge batch (like im sure M&M does). My plans are to make some pizzas late saturday night, and by then I think I will have only seen fairly minimal rise in the fridge (which is what I think we are looking for). I am going to let the dough rest for a good few hours once I take it out of the fridge before it goes into the oven. This will ensure that there is no bubbling caused by using a cool dough. I know tom lehmann says to get it above 65 degrees before use, but in my experience that temp can still cause some minor bubbling. My target dough temp before going into the oven is going to be more like 75 degrees, so I will probably set my thermocool unit to that temp and give the dough balls about two to three hours to reach it.

Wow..great news that you are also going to experiment with this Mack’s style of pizza. As I said before in another post I only have Kyrol flour for now, but will get a bag of All Trumps if the Kyrol doesn’t work out. I will also change my formula to see if we get anywhere near the same results. I will also use a thermometer to make sure my dough temperature is okay, before proceeding to open the dough. Since I am going to be making the dough this afternoon, my dough probably won’t be ready when yours is.

The five test dough balls for the Mack’s pizza were made this afternoon. I used Kyrol flour and changed the formula to 59 % hydration. The ambient temperature at market today was 62 degrees F. I did mix the dough for a longer time than I usually do. I first mixed the flour and water until they were incorporated, then mixed the IDY, then salt, and finally the olive oil. The total mix time was 18 minutes. I was surprised that the olive oil took so long to incorporate. The dough did turn out smooth and was a lot different than my normal poolish dough. The final dough temperature coming off the hook was 71 degrees F. After the dough was transferred onto the bench the dough temperature then dropped to 70 degrees F. I then weighed each ball and formed the dough balls. Then poppy seeds were placed on them to see how much they ferment. I brought one dough ball home to try either Saturday or Sunday, depending how much they do ferment.

Since only my overhead light was on today, the pictures are darker than usual.

One of the things that I discovered when attempting to reverse engineer a well known pizza, especially one that I have never eaten before, is that there is no clear benchmark. For example, when I did my research on Mack and M&M, the descriptors that I saw most frequently used to describe their pizzas were "thin" and "crispy" (followed by "oily", "too little sauce and cheese", and "expensive"). Their pizzas were said to "look" like a NY style but were not NY style pizzas, and they were not particularly "chewy". Some said that the pizzas were a cross between a NY style and a cracker style. I suppose that both descriptions can be correct. For example, a Mack's pizza right out of the oven will have slices that drip of oil and droop and can be folded and eaten like a NY style, as was noted in the YouTube video at . But, when the pizza cools off, the crust, and especially the rim, can become more cracker like, with greater rigidity in the slices

When I looked at photos and videos of the Mack's and M&M pizzas, I saw pizzas that had crusts that were light in color and pizzas that had darker crusts, and also darker bottoms. Some of the pizzas had distinct rims but others were almost rimless. Some of the pizzas showed signs of long fermentation whereas others showed little or none. Maybe Mack's et al have the same problems as we do with seemingly random, hard to explain blistering. Possibly some of the above factors can be explained away by noting that different pizza makers make the pizzas, in their own distinctive way, at different times of day, at different locations, and with oven temperatures that may vary based on ordering patterns and other factors. It's also possible that Mack's et al have emergency dough versions of their regular doughs and that the ingredients used to make the pizzas vary over a period of time.

Like you, I noted certain parallels with the Trenton style as exemplified by the DeLorenzo's dough/pizza. Both use doughs that are quite extensible (see the DeLorenzo dough at the links referenced in Reply 155 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,7841.msg58419.html#msg58419). It was reported several times at the DeLorenzo thread (at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,7841.0.html) that the flour used by DeLorenzo's is all-purpose flour, although I don't recall that the skins were tossed. The sequence of placement of shredded mozzarella cheese and sauce used by DeLorenzo's to make a basic pizza is the same as used by Mack's et al. The DeLorenzo pizzas are considerably smaller than those made at Mack's et al, and they are cut family-style rather than the standard way. The cheeses and sauces are different also. DeLorenzo's uses deck ovens, but so did Mack's in the beginning (although the DeLorenzo ovens may run hotter). If I had to guess, the doughs made at Mack's et al are more hydrated than the DeLorenzo's dough and the crusts are perhaps thicker. At the DeLorenzo's thread, it was repeatedly noted that the DeLorenzo crusts have a distinct cracker like quality and that the pieces can be held out straight without drooping.

Since you know what a Mack's pizza should look and taste like, at least as you recall their pizzas, it will be interesting to see what you come up with.

The pizzas I remember are thin, but not crispy in my opinion. Maybe sometimes the rim was crispy, after it cooled down some, but I don’t recall the rest of the crust being crispy. The Mack’s pizzas don’t droop as much as some NY style pies, but there are other NY pies I have tasted that the crust are about the same as Mack’s. I have eaten in many pizza places in NY, in most of the boroughs, but they were just regular pizza places. Every time I have been to NY, which has been many times over the last 12 years, I usually try another place, just to see what they taste like. Maybe since ERASMO was just at Mack’s last week, he can give some more opinions on how the crust was.

The cheese always wanted to drip off the pizza, if you ate the pizza right in their place, just like the video you referenced in the link. Your paper plate was always full of grease. If you let the pie cool down, then the cheese changed, even if you reheated it.

I can’t ever remember the crusts being light, but I could guess by having different pie makers manning the ovens, there could be different crust colors. I can believe there even could be a difference in the crust if they let their dough ferment for a day longer or would have to make an emergency dough. I just am trying to think about how they can store all those dough balls in some of Mack’s or Mack and Manco’s that are smaller. If they are storing them in the basement, they make many pies in a days time. Even with using racks and dough trays, some of the Mack’s and Mack and Manco’s are small in size.

I still wonder about the dough at DeLorenzo's being similar. I read somewhere that a man commented on how he would like to have the pies together to compare, because he thought they were alike. That made me wonder if he had tried all three pies, because he had commented on their similarity.

I hope I can get down to Mack’s in May and see what my opinion is now. I would observe a lot more. I still can remember the taste of Mack’s pizza, so at least that might help me to know if the pizza tastes right, while doing the tests. This is a pizza I never will forget.

I don’t know how much the difference is in mild cheddar cheeses or what Mack’s really uses. Maybe we will find this out in time.

I can imagine how hard it is to reverse engineer a pizza. You have done this with success. I hope with time we will get this figured out.

I am also anxious to hear how scott r experiment is going. I wonder if his dough looked anything like mine?

I like to work the numbers. For example, I would be interested in knowing what a typical dough ball at Mack's weighs or, failing that, the weight of a typical fully baked pizza with only sauce and cheese. If I were to go to Mack's, I would bring a tape measure, scale and camera with me. In your case, since you are a professional from an alien land (Pennsylvania) and not a likely competitor threatening their enterprise, they might confide in you about their pizzas, including type/brand of flour used, dough ball weight and typical bake temperatures/times (you will also be able to view the temperature display for their oven). I'm sure that you would also survey the operation for signs of how they make their pizzas (e.g., mixer, coolers, etc).

The video you posted earlier, taken together with data like dough ball/pizza weight, would seem to be valuable to estimate the amount of sauce and cheeses to use. There is no exactitude on amount of sauce and cheeses used at Mack's, because of the free-throwing of cheeses and the hose method for the sauce, so a modest variation would not alter things in any material way. If you can get a sauce that is similar to what Mack's uses, and run a few cheese blend experiments, and use your oven at market, you might come pretty close to what Mack's does.

I can always see you are about numbers, but this time is different. If I get to go to Mack’s I will take the needed equipment along. I kind of doubt they would confide in me about their pizzas, but it is worth a try. I will ask the questions and also note what is going on inside their pizza business. The times I was there, I never saw a mixer, so that leads me to believe they are making the dough in the basement. When scott r said he talked to his friend that worked there, he also might know the answers to those unanswered questions.

I would like to know a starting point for the cheese, but can’t estimate how much cheese they use. When making the test pie on Tuesday, just to see how the cheese tasted on the finished pie, it didn’t taste anything like Mack’s. I didn’t measure how much cheese Steve and I put on that pie, but will weigh the amounts of both cheeses this time and also the sauce. I think my sauce was a little to thick on Tuesday. I also use different herbs in the sauce for market, so that could have affected the overall taste. I really don’t think they use that much sauce on their pizzas. I will use the cake decorator again to apply the sauce.

I believe the best place to test the Mack’s pizza is at market, also. Hopefully the dough is okay Tuesday. I can then try more pizzas at home to see what kind of results can be achieved in my home oven. There are so many members on this forum that are very creative in their use of a home oven, so if we all ever get this figured out, then any member that wanted to taste a Mack’s style pizza could. We will all see what happens.

I have already checked the dough in my refrigerator 3 times since I came home from market.